Van Plows Into Line of Children in Chinatown, Killing 2

The van started moving in reverse, swerved onto the sidewalk and into the preschoolers, on East Broadway between Catherine and Market Streets.Credit
Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

An unoccupied van that had been left in reverse mounted a sidewalk and rammed into a group of preschool students on a busy street in Chinatown on Thursday, killing two of the children and injuring at least 11 other people, the authorities said.

The crash, on East Broadway between Catherine and Market Streets, transformed the teeming strip of produce stands, restaurants, tenements and shoppers into a scene of chaos as schoolchildren lay bleeding on the sidewalk and witnesses shrieked.

“I heard screaming,” said Katharine Montaldo, 39, from the East Village. “I came running up. All I saw was blood.”

The children had been walking back to their preschool, just around the corner, after a trip to the library. They were linked in a daisy chain intended to keep them together when the van lurched onto the sidewalk and crashed into them.

The police said that a 4-year-old girl, Hayley Ng of Chinatown, died at the scene and that Diego Martinez, a 3-year-old boy from Chelsea, died at New York Downtown Hospital. Another 4-year-old girl was seriously injured and taken to the hospital, where she was listed in critical condition late Thursday; her name was not released. About 10 other people, children and some adults, had minor injuries, the authorities said.

The driver of the van, identified as Chao Fu, 52, of Brooklyn, was not charged; his license and registration papers were in order and he tested negative for alcohol, said Paul J. Browne, the police spokesman. Mr. Chao had double-parked and entered a store, leaving the van running and in reverse gear, thinking it was in park, Mr. Browne said.

Mr. Chao first realized that the vehicle had moved “when he came out of the store and it had already crashed,” Mr. Browne said.

The silver-colored van, a 2000 Ford, was emblazoned with the name of a downtown restaurant, China Chalet. A woman who answered the phone at the restaurant on Thursday afternoon said in Chinese that “something happened.” The woman said the company’s owner was not available for comment, and then hung up.

Photo

A child being carried from the scene. Fourteen preschool children from a child care center on Market Street had just left a library branch on East Broadway.Credit
Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency

The children had just spent an hour at the Chatham Square branch of the New York Public Library at 33 East Broadway, in the same block where the accident occurred. They had listened to a librarian read the children’s books “Snow,” about animals in a winter wonderland, and “Shark in the Park,” about a boy who spots a shark through a telescope. They also browsed in the children’s section, a library spokesman said.

About 11:30 they left, walking up East Broadway in a line, holding on to one another and chaperoned by adults on their way back to their day care program, the Red Apple Child Development Center at 25 Market Street, about two blocks away.

The line of children, 14 in all, had stopped outside a store and had just started to walk again when the accident occurred. The van began moving in reverse, Mr. Browne said, and traveled several car lengths backward. Then the wheel started to turn to the left, the van climbed the curb and plowed into the children, “killing one on the spot,” Mr. Browne said.

Investigators later saw video of the empty van moving, and then striking the children.

Witnesses who were not aware that the van was unoccupied said they thought it was attempting a three-point turn.

“He backed up,” said Alma Torres, 49, who was standing across the street. “He jumped the curb. You heard the bang. People started running.”

And then came “the screaming,” said another witness, Anthony Amoroso, 50, who lives in East New York, Brooklyn.

After the ambulances arrived, the authorities draped white sheets at the back of the van along the sidewalk. The sheets were bloodstained; at moments, the wind briefly blew off one of the sheets, revealing the body of a small child, wearing gray pants.

Around the corner on Market Street, neighborhood residents and workers gathered opposite the entrance to the day care center. At one point a grief-stricken man and woman, clutching each other, were escorted out by the police and into a police van.

“All of us at Red Apple Child Development Center are stunned and deeply saddened by this tragic accident,” the center’s director, Xiaoping Fan, said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to the families of all of the children involved and especially to the two families who suffered the loss of their child.”

At New York Downtown Hospital, members of the emergency staff sought to save Diego, the 3-year-old boy, said Dr. Warren B. Licht, the hospital’s chief medical officer. “Everything possible was tried to save this child’s life,” he said. The boy died at 12:33 p.m., just over an hour after the accident, the doctor said.